Commission votes to deny Bella Linda

TEMECULA  Citing concerns about "overloading" a neighborhood, the Planning Commission voted this week to recommend denial of an apartment complex/senior housing development proposed for land in southern Temecula near the Pechanga Resort & Casino.

The vote was 4-1 with Commissioner Stan Harter dissenting. The commission's recommendation will be forwarded to the City Council, which has the final say. The council could review the project during its first meeting in May.

"I'm really worried about it," said Commissioner Carl Carey, talking about the apartment complex portion of the development that would feature 325 units.

His concerns were shared by the majority of the commissioners, who said they would have preferred fewer apartments.

"It seems to be overloading the neighborhood," said Commissioner Pat Kight, who prefaced that comment by thanking the developers for making changes to the project that had been requested by the commission at its two previous meetings.

Those changes included sprucing up the design of the apartment buildings that would be facing Pechanga Parkway and beefing up the conditions of approval to provide the city with more assurances that the senior part of the development would be built.

The development, named "Bella Linda," is proposed for 22.73 acres of land at the northeast corner of Pechanga Parkway and Loma Linda Road.

Working with the city's planning department, Newport Beach-based Coyne Development linked the proposed 325-unit apartment complex to a senior housing development that features 49 single-family homes. The homes, as pitched Wednesday, would range in size from 1,600 to 2,150 square feet and the vast majority would be single-story dwellings.

Looking at just the apartment complex, the density for that section of the property is 24.27 units per acre. Combined, the density falls to 16.5 units per acre, which is similar to other high-density projects in the city.

If the project eventually is approved by the council, Coyne has proposed building all of the infrastructure and putting in the landscaping for the entire property and then selling the land for the senior homes to another builder, who would construct the project to the specs approved by the city.

On Wednesday, Steven Coyne of Coyne Development told the commission his company is working to ink a deal for the senior component with Richmond American Homes, a builder with ties in Temecula who has built homes in the Harveston community.

"We don't view the age-restricted homes as an if, but a when," he said.

His comments, however, and the presence of Richmond American official Van Martin, who said his company already had spent money studying the senior side of the project, failed to provide the commission with confidence that the age-restricted homes would be constructed. Kight called them "quasi-assurances."

"I'm just not seeing it with this project," said Commissioner Ron Guerriero, who, at earlier meetings, had said he'd prefer an ironclad agreement mandating the construction of both parts of the development in tandem.

He felt strongly on that issue, he said, because the city has been burned in the past by half-finished projects.